AMONG contemporary crime writers, Robert B. Parker, Ed McBain and Mary Higgins Clark all rank high. In their latest books, they leave us in no doubt that rogues and villains are still on the prowl from Massachusetts to Florida, from Florida to California, from sea to shining sea.

Up in Massachusetts, Robert B. Parker's veteran private eye Spenser is called in by a newspaper boss to investigate the unsolved murder of one of his reporters, Eric Valdez, who has met his end while ferreting around in the old textile town of Wheaton. He had been sent there to find out how much truth there was in rumors that the town had become a major center of the cocaine trade.

Was he killed because he was on to something? Not according to the local police. As they see it, both his reputation as a Don Juan (they express themselves somewhat more forcefully) and the circumstances of his death point to him having been struck down by a jealous husband; and in any case, all the talk about coke is nonsense. But the more we get to know Wheaton, the less confidence its police force inspires.

Ignoring threats, attempts to beat him up, a car bombing and other invitations to leave town, Spenser has little trouble identifying the most likely local drug baron. But pinning the proof on him is another matter, and there are still a number of puzzles about why Valdez was killed - puzzles that involve at least two women, possibly three.

On the whole, however, you would be ill advised to go to a Spenser novel for the sake of the plot. Mr. Parker's specialties are action, humor and atmosphere, and in ''Pale Kings and Princes'' all three are ladled out in generous doses.

The small-town setting is particularly convincing. As so often, the artificial excitement of a thriller lends an interest to naturalistic details - an extended account of a bar in a run-down motel, for example - that would soon pall if we came across them in a straightforward novel.

It's an amusing book, too. One smart crack succeeds another, and most of them are quite funny. Spenser himself is never at a loss for an educated retort (when someone complains about him ''snooping around under false pretenses,'' he very reasonably replies, ''What other kinds of pretenses are there?''), and his friend Susan, the most glamorous of fictional psychoanalysts, even manages to come up with a good ribald joke about a poem by Wallace Stevens. * * *

Down in Florida, Matthew Hope is wondering whether he made the right decision in switching to criminal law - the work just isn't coming in. Then a new case revives his wilting Perry Mason impulses. A man named Carlton Markham is accused of killing his wife, Prudence; he asks Hope to defend him, and despite strong circumstantial evidence pointing the other way, the lawyer is convinced of his innocence.

Beyond that, though, he has almost nothing to go on. Prudence, a film maker with several respectable documentaries to her credit, had been working on a new picture, which may or may not have held the key to her murder; but she had kept the details secret, and even Markham doesn't seem to know anything about it.

Like earlier Matthew Hope mysteries, ''Puss in Boots'' gives its fairy-tale title a sardonic twist. It turns out that Prudence had taken a plunge into porn, and in the course of the search for her killer we traverse some thoroughly X-rated regions. Nor is Hope alone in trying to track down the missing film: he has some unsavory rivals.

I suspect that by now even those admirers of Ed McBain who find Matthew Hope a disappointment, in comparison with Mr. McBain's stories of the 87th Precinct, have mostly become reconciled to taking the lesser series on its own terms. ''Puss in Boots'' is an undeniably accomplished piece of work, and if Hope himself is still the same cardboard hero, his adventures are fast-paced and exciting. But does the denouement have to be quite so nasty - even nastier than the sleazy milieu of the book might seem to warrant? * * *

Out in California, the guests are gathering at Cypress Point Spa, a haven where the rich and famous pay $5,000 a week to recuperate from their life styles. This time the assembled throng includes a handsome tycoon who is shortly to stand trial for the murder of a beautiful actress (did she fall? was she pushed?); the actress's scarcely less beautiful sister, who is the key witness for the prosecution, and an assortment of friends and colleagues, almost any of whom might be concealing a guilty secret. Nor can the owners of the spa, Baron and Baroness von Schreiber, be considered wholly above suspicion. Far from it.

Mary Higgins Clark's early books, beginning with ''Where Are the Children?,'' play powerfully and at times almost unbearably on elemental fears. The glossy artifice of ''Weep No More, My Lady'' seems to me much less well suited to her gifts, and despite some elaborate subplotting -you can never go altogether wrong with anonymous letters - I found it hard to get very worked up about who (if anyone) gave the fatal push.

Where the book comes into its own, on the other hand, is in its account of the spa. You can sense how much Mrs. Clark must have enjoyed herself dreaming up the decor (''An Aubusson rug shimmered on the dark tile'') and decking out her characters (''Elizabeth decided to wear the dusty-pink silk jumpsuit with a magenta sash''); the unctuous little notes that the Baron and Baroness send to their ''dear guests'' every morning produce an appropriate squirm, and you end up by following the details with fascination, down to the last alcohol-free cocktail and low-calorie mousse.